


won't you stand up and scream

by blackwell



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Established Relationship, M/M, Phone Sex, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Secret Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-20
Updated: 2014-11-22
Packaged: 2018-02-09 17:48:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1992078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackwell/pseuds/blackwell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It hurts. It hurts that SHIELD thinks it owns his death as much as it already owns his life. It hurts that Nick can walk away from his partner bleeding on the ground, can tell the Avengers <i>he’s dead</i> as if Phil meant no more to him than any other agent. </p>
<p>As if Phil meant less to him than any other agent.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from "Things Goin' On."

He remembers the pain.

Pain is no easy thing to remember—it’s not like fear or grief or betrayal. Once the physical sensation fades, the memory quickly follows. You try to remember, but it’s like trying to say what you dreamed about last night after you’ve been for a run and had your first cup of coffee. Maybe it’s right there, hovering on the edge of your mind, but you can’t quite grasp it—it’s lost to you. 

That’s the way it’s supposed to be, anyway. Phil Coulson has never been a stranger to pain, and that’s the way it’s always worked for him before.

Not this time, though. This time, the sterile hospital room and the eerie movements of the doctors’ hands, the voices in the background, these are all elusive, but the pain?

He remembers the pain.

It’s teaching him new things about himself. He hadn’t known you could dream of pain, could toss and turn all night, wake up screaming, and have no explanation of why other than it hurt.

After the third time, he stops trying to sleep. He sits on his bed, or what passes for his bed on the Bus, with his knees folded up to his chest for some six hours in a row.

It’s stupid. It’s weak. It’s a waste of time, and there’s nothing Phil hates more than a waste of time. 

He gets up and makes his way down the hallway. He isn’t headed anywhere in particular, nor is he trying to avoid anyone, so he supposes he shouldn’t be surprised when he runs into May.

“Can’t sleep?” She’s blunt, as always. Phil usually appreciates that about her, but right now she’s trying to get him to confess to something he doesn’t want to confess to.

“I’m a little restless. It’s nothing.”

She snorts. “I told you to let it go, Phil.” She’s aiming for harsh; he knows her well enough to be fairly certain of that.

“Turns out that’s not so easy in practice.”

“Try harder.” And then her voice softens. “Trust me, Phil, you don’t want to go down that road.”

Phil will realize, much later, that if that advice had come from anyone else, he might have taken it. But he knows May—he’s one of only a handful of people who can make that claim, in fact—and to know May is to know that she’s the last person you should listen to when you’re being stirred into a frenzy by a whirlwind of conflicting emotions. He hasn’t spent all this time telling her to _feel_ only to listen when she says _don’t feel_.

He goes back down the hallways, sits on his bed, pulls a small notebook out from under his mattress, and tries to remember.

 

The entries in his notebook read more like absurdist poetry than anything.

_Dark shadows in the corner of the room._

_Extra gowns on the back of a chair._

_Restless sleeping._

_Hands._

_Murmurs from above._

_Screaming and no sound_.

There’s nothing helpful about any of that. 

The one thing he does remember, the one thing that might be helpful, isn’t something he can bring himself to write down: Nick.

It was all because of Nick.

Now, a lot of things in Phil’s life have been all because of Nick. Nick, for instance, is to blame for every long and infuriating conversation Phil has ever had with Tony Stark. He’s to be thanked for Phil’s friendship with Pepper. 

Every little inconvenience Phil has dealt with on Nick’s behalf, though, and every wound he’s suffered in Fury’s service, all of those are insignificant. They’re a part of what he signed up for. 

This bullshit? None of this is anything Phil Coulson signed up for.

They say the only way to really get out of SHIELD is to die. Fair enough.

Fair enough, as long as it’s a failsafe. They don’t say the only way to really get out of SHIELD is to die, and even that doesn’t always work. That would just be too much.

It hurts. It hurts that SHIELD thinks it owns his death as much as it already does his life. It hurts that Nick can walk away from his partner bleeding on the ground, can tell the Avengers _he’s dead_ as if Phil meant no more to him than any other agent. 

As if Phil meant less to him than any other agent.

Phil understands the why of it all—he does. He understands that there was an entire planet on the line. He understands that Nick is not the sort of man to let the dead remain dead if he can do anything about it.

But he also understands that if their positions had been reversed, he would have made different choices.

 

It’s a long time before he and May speak again. When they do, to his surprise, it’s she who initiates it.

“How’re you holding up?” she asks him over a mug of something warm—tea, probably.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means,” May says, making a face as if the words hurt her mouth, “how’re you feeling?”

“Betrayed,” he says, before he can think better of it. That was foolish. A SHIELD agent should really know better. “I mean, just, SHIELD, and the Avengers, and…”

She cuts him off before he can embarrass himself any further. “I know about you and Director Fury.”

He should probably be concerned, but he’s more surprised. “How?”

She presses her lips together. “I suspected for a long time. But I didn’t know…I didn’t know until you said what you said to me. About Agent Ward.”

“Because I allowed you to conduct an illicit relationship with a fellow agent, you assumed I must also be conducting an illicit relationship with a fellow agent?”

“It seemed likely. And I was right, wasn’t I?”

“You were.” There’s no sense in stalling; she’s going to wrangle the truth out of him one way or another.

He half-expects her to gloat, but she just takes another sip of her drink. “So, do you want to talk about it?”

“I…I’m sorry, Melinda, but no. I don’t.”

“Okay.” She takes yet another sip, and her face is unreadable. “If you change your mind, I’m here for you. We’re all here for you.”

Phil knows that. It doesn’t make the pain any less sharp.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updates will be much more frequent from here on out. I got caught up in RL and also in another project, sorry.

Considering that they’re all supposed to be “there for him,” or whatever it was May said, the members of his team sure seem to be keeping their distance. Sometimes, he swears it seems like he’s the only person on the Bus.

When he gets up in the small hours of morning, shaken awake by nightmares, and stands outside of his room, he is utterly alone. He never sees anyone at these times. 

Phil’s life has not prepared him for this sort of loneliness. He is not the agents he trains, accustomed to seeing no one and speaking nothing for long periods of time. It’s a change, and he isn’t sure if he likes it or not.

 

He takes to working the bag in the gym. Boxing was never an interest of Phil’s, not really, but he finds himself spending upwards of two hours a day down there, sweat running down his forehead into his eyes and his feet tap-tap-tapping against the floor.

If the others notice, they don’t say anything—not for a good long time.

It’s Ward who breaks the silence.

Phil turns around and he’s just standing there, arms crossed over his broad chest, his eyes narrowed ever so slightly.

There was a time, not long ago, when that pose alone could have brought a smile to Phil’s lips. When he would instantly have thought of some deadpan joke to make at Ward’s expense—Ward, who’s been trying so long to be the perfect image of SHIELD agent that he no longer remembers it’s an act.

But Phil doesn’t find much funny these days, especially not Ward. More and more, the man unsettles him. He seems as though he weren’t so much a part of the team as an impartial observer, and what business does he have being an impartial observer? The very notion sets Phil on edge.

But then there are times when something shifts, when the old Ward shines through and Phil curses himself for having ever seen anything different. This is one of those times.

“It helps, doesn’t it?” Ward takes a step closer, and his arms fall to his sides and his posture eases. “Punching things.”

Phil shrugs.

“It always helps me.”

“Who told you I needed to be helped?”

Ward’s face grows tight. “Please. I’m not May, but I’m not an idiot.”

Phil has to give him that. “Sorry.”

“Yeah.” He thinks Ward is going to leave, but he stops, turns around. “Coulson? If you ever want a sparring partner, you know where to find me.”

 

The thing about grief is that it isn’t constant. Phil knew that, in theory—he knew his suffering wasn’t going to steadily taper off into nothing. But he wasn’t expecting this, either, this constant ebb and flow.

Some days, he can barely get out of bed. All he can do is lie there and think _pain_ and _dead_ and _betrayal_ and _alive_.

And _Nick_. Always _Nick_. 

Other days, though, he’s…fine. Or whatever passes for fine on the Bus. 

It’s on one of these days that Nick finally calls.

Nick doesn’t call that often. He and Phil have an understanding, one that says business should be interrupted for pleasure only on very rare occasion.

But this is no business call—it’s Phil’s personal phone that’s buzzing on the table, Phil’s personal phone that May scoops up.

“Nick,” she reads aloud from the caller idea.

Phil didn’t need to be told it was Nick. Nick’s the only one who has that number.

May holds the phone out to him, but he doesn’t take it. He lets it buzz in her hand for another minute, and then it goes quiet.

May says nothing.

 

Phil Coulson has never intentionally turned down a personal call from Nick Fury. 

Well, there was the time in Rome when he was being shot at by two thugs with suspiciously good aim, but they both agreed afterward that that didn’t count. There was also the time he hung up on Nick for trying to have phone sex out of a sniper’s nest in Belarus, but that’s not the point, either.

The point is that turning down a call from Nick means something. Something big.

Phil would pay good money to know what.

 

The next time Nick calls, he almost picks up.

He’s going over an op with May, and he pulls his phone out of his pocket and has it halfway to his ear before he thinks: _really_?

Can he really talk to Nick right now? Really, when he still wakes up in the morning trembling from nightmares that he knows are Nick’s fault?

He’s not sure he can stand to talk to Nick like everything’s normal when he knows it’s not. So he doesn’t answer the phone.

There’s no way May missed anything that went through his mind at that moment—a fool could have made a good guess, and May is no fool. But May says nothing.

She folds the map that they had been looking at in half and hands it over to him. After a few beats have passed, she says, “I heard Ward offered to spar with you.”

“He did.”

“You should take him up on that. Might be good for you.”

“Or I could spar with you,” he says, because spending time alone with Ward isn’t something he’s eager to do at the moment.

“I don’t think so,” May says.

“Because you’d beat me up?”

“Because I might start giving you advice.”

 

And isn’t that just like May? Now Phil can’t stop wondering what her advice would be. He lasts a truly pathetic eighty-five minutes before he breaks down and asks her.

“If you have something to say, say it.”

She’s May, so she doesn’t need to ask what he means. “Next time he calls, you gotta pick up.”

“Do you really think that’s a good idea?”

“Coulson.” She looks right at him—right through him—and he swears she does those rock-hard eyes on purpose. “Talking to him is the only way you’re gonna figure out if this thing you two have is worth saving.”

He regrets allowing her to give him advice.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another long wait, for which I apologize. I sort of changed direction halfway through with this, but I'm pretty satisfied with the way it's coming along.

Phil sits on top of his mattress, leaning back against the wall. His arms are resting on his knees, and his phone is in his hands.

He’s been sitting like this for the better part of an hour, waiting for Nick to call. His legs are growing stiff. He aches to move.

If he moves, though—if he walks out into the hall, finds himself something to do—he won’t pick up when the phone rings. He’ll—what is it May says he does?—he’ll _hide behind distractions_.

Nick will call soon. When he does, Phil will pick up.

But he isn’t sure what he’ll say.

_So I have a bone to pick with you, Nick_ , he tries saying in his head. _I wanted to die, you wouldn’t let me. What sort of a man are you_?

But Phil doesn’t need to hear Nick answer that question. He already knows what sort of a man Nick is; he’s the sort of man who would never, in a million years, consider the possibility of letting his partner die.

The phone rings.

Phil snaps it open. “Coulson.”

The sound of a soft laugh comes through the receiver. “Phil. It’s me.”

Phil tries to force a smile. “Of course it is.”

“I was getting worried about you. You drop your phone in the sink or something?”

“No. I was just busy.” The second the words are out of his mouth, Phil curses himself—Nick is going to know it’s a lie.

Indeed, the long pause on the other end of the line indicated that the man isn’t fooled. “Well then. How’re you doing? Okay?”

“I’m doing great.”

“Phil…I know you’ve had a rough time of it lately. You can stop pretending.”

_Yeah, I have, and it’s all YOUR FAULT_. That’s what Phil wants to say. But he doesn’t, of course.

He seizes on the first potential distraction that springs to mind. “What are you wearing?”

This time, the pause is even longer. “Phil. Seriously.”

“What?”

“I don’t think phone sex is the appropriate response to the current circumstances.” Nick speaks in Fury’s tones—hard and firm, brooking no argument. Phil isn’t going to be able to distract him.

Only one thing to do, then.

He hangs up.  
May and Ward are sparring in the gym.

Phil stands in the doorway, watching them for a moment, before he clears his throat. “Get cleaned up.”

May pulls her last punch, straightening up and brushing her hair out of her eyes.

“What is it?”

“They need you in the lab. Stat.”

There isn’t a grain of truth to it, but Phil needs the gym to himself right now. He barely manages to wait for them to clear out before wailing away on the punching bag like a madman.

He has never been so physical with his anger.

It’s Nick, he knows, even if he doesn’t want to admit it. After all these years, it’s Nick’s temper, which manifests itself as sweeping gestures and, yes, punching things until his knuckles are raw and bloody.

A long time ago, Phil started to become Nick, and Nick started to become Phil.  
He calls Nick back. He has no choice.

Nick’s voice breaks with relief when he hears him on the other end of the line, and Phil tries not to think too hard about that. Tries not to think about how Nick must have been sitting alone—in their apartment? yes, it would be their apartment—and wondering if Phil would call. Figuring he wouldn’t.

He tells Nick about the team. About May, who’s doing better. About Ward, who’s doing worse.

“Seriously, Nick, sometimes I just don’t know what to make of the man.”

“No reason to worry. He’s an odd one, but SHIELD is full of odd ones.”

Phil nods his head, not thinking. “Yeah. I should be going. Duty calls.”

Nick chuckles. “As always. And Phil?”

“Yes?”

“For what I did, I’m sorry.”  
 _I’m sorry_.

Of course, that might not mean what Phil thinks it means. It’s a little indirect, by Nick’s standards—his customary apologies have all the dispassionate detail of battle plans. There’s also no reason to believe that Nick knows Phil is no longer in the dark about what he did.

But Phil heard the honesty in those words. Nick understands, at least, that he’s suspicious, and he is sorry. Of course he is.

Nick Fury is a man who takes apologies seriously. He says the words, he means them, and then he forges ahead, because you don’t get to be where Nick Fury is in life by having regrets.

It was that confidence, that quiet determination, that he fell in love with first. Now, though, the same qualities frustrate him more than he can say. 

Phil wants to talk. That might make him sound like he’s thirteen years old and just discovered boys, but dammit it, he wants to talk.  
He calls again. Less than half an hour later.

Nick picks up the phone on the first ring. “What’s wrong?”

“I was thinking about what you said earlier.”

There’s a long hesitation. “About Ward?”

“No. Later. When you said _I’m sorry_.”

Phil can hear Nick draw in a sharp breath on the other end of the line. 

“I know what you did.”

He thought it would be a relief to say it. It’s not.

It’s not, because when Nick responds he sounds so tired, so hopeless, so fucking broken, and Phil is instantly furious with himself for being the cause of that.

“I…Phil…I…”

“It’s…it’s okay. I…”

He can’t say it. He can’t say _I forgive you_ , those three little words that would make everything better.

Nick swallows audibly, and if Phil closes his eyes he can see him—Nick shifting on their bed, Nick steeling himself.

When he speaks, it’s very quiet. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

Phil doesn’t know, either. “I…I need you to give me some time. To think about it.”

It’s not the forgiveness he wants to offer. It’s certainly not what Nick wants to hear. But Nick has the good sense to swallow once again, to say, “I can do that.”

And then he hangs up the phone, and Phil is alone once more.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for another long wait, everyone. I'll try to be better about the last installment, but experience has taught me that I shouldn't make any promises. I hope you enjoy!

May takes a bullet to the thigh on a milk run in Albuquerque.

Phil’s seen agents take worse injuries in the field, of course—hell, he’s seen May take worse injuries in the field—but it hits him hard.

“Never do that to me again,” he says to her a few hours later, as he hovers above her mattress. He’s acting like a strung-out mother hen and he knows it; May must be about ready to punch him in the face.

She seems oddly tolerant, though, considering that there’s almost nothing she hates more than being babied. “Don’t worry about it, Phil,” she says, and if her voice sounds weak he can at least take comfort in the fact that at this stage, it’s surely nothing more than exhaustion.

“Are you going okay? Is there anything I can get you?”

“Yeah,” she says on a long exhale, and the word is almost lost in the sound of her breathing. “Ward.”

“Ward,” he repeats, and he doesn’t intend for it to sound like a question, but somehow it does. 

“Ward,” she says firmly, in a voice that makes it clear she will not be discussing this aspect of her personal life with him anytime soon. He almost calls her a hypocrite, but he thinks better of it.

He’s already stood to go when it hits him again, that traitorous thought—totally unsuited to a SHIELD agent—that has been nagging him since May’s accident. “Melinda?”

“Mmm?”

“If that bullet had been much higher…if…”

“You wouldn’t have been able to save me,” she says, with perfect composure. “I know. It’s okay.”

“Don’t say that.”

“What?” Her surprise is genuine.

“It’s not okay. It wouldn’t be okay.”

She raises an eyebrow. “I’m going to die in the field one day, Phil. Most of the people I’ve cared for in my life are going to die in the field. That’s just statistics.”

He feels like he’s going to be sick.

“Come on, Phil,” she says, and her voice is as far from her usual brusque tone as he’s ever heard it. “You were a soldier. You have to know what our chances really are.”

~

Phil was a soldier, a long time ago.

Nick was a soldier, too. 

Phil isn’t proud of this, but he used to wake up in the middle of the night, shaking and cursing, with images of Nick’s lifeless body still frozen in his mind. 

Sometimes, when he’s having a particularly bad day, he still does. After the whole thing with Peterson went down, he dreamed that he woke up on the helicarrier, in exactly the place where he now knows he once lost his life. He floated up toward the ceiling and, looking down, saw Nick’s body lying where his own should have been.

He was still screaming when he woke up.

It hasn’t been that bad in a very long time.

For years now, the Nick who appears in Phil’s dreams most often has been a living Nick, a frowning cursing _smiling_ Nick. 

Their apartment in New York has a balcony, and they have a lounge chair sitting out there. They aren’t rich, and even if they were they would still need to keep a low profile, so the balcony isn’t so much small as it is microscopic. They had to turn the lounge chair at an awkward angle to get it to fit, and if Phil’s being honest with himself it looks rather stupid sitting out there.

But Nick loves that lounge chair. He talks about it all the time when they aren’t at home, which is often given their profession. “I just want to sit in my goddamn chair,” he’s been known to snap at junior agents who are being unusually frustrating. They have no idea that the chair sits on the balcony of the apartment Nick shares with Phil, but they get the general meaning. The chair is a legend.

Often, Phil dreams of Nick sitting in that chair in the summer, so late at night that even in New York you can see the faint traces of stars overhead. It isn’t unusual for Phil to wake up in bed alone and find that Nick’s fallen asleep out there. He doesn’t care; he never has. The idea of Nick falling asleep like that—just drifting off, without checking that his knife is under his pillow and the door is locked and bolted—has always made him happy.

Phil wants those dreams back. He wants that life back. He wants to get in bed at night knowing that Nick’s well, and happy. He wants to get in bed at night knowing that in the morning Nick’s going to be there and they’re going to fuck in the kitchen before breakfast. That’s all he’s ever wanted, if he’s honest with himself.

And he’s beginning to worry that he’s lost his only chance.

~

He calls Nick that night.

“I changed my mind about the phone sex,” he says before Nick even speaks.

There’s a moment’s silence, and then Nick says, “I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to lead with _what are you wearing_?”

“What are you wearing?” Phil says, and if he says it in a mocking tone, it doesn’t matter—it’s good-natured.

“Uh, sweatpants. Navy blue. And a t-shirt.”

“You’re home?”

“Yeah,” Nick says, and there’s a note of unease in his voice. “Do you mind? I just thought, well, I had a day off and…”

“Of course I don’t mind,” Phil says, and he means it. Nick only goes home when he needs to get away from everything. He would never begrudge him that.

Nick swallows. “So, umm, you? What are you wearing?”

“Boxer briefs. What can I say, I’m prepared.”

And he is prepared, _god_ , his dick is hard and aching already. He’s missed this so fucking much, and he didn’t even realize it until this moment.

Nick’s breathing is rough coming through the receiver, and Phil suspects he’s feeling the same way.

“I’ve got my hand on my dick,” he rasps, and Phil moans.

“You always have to cut to the chase, don’t you?”

He’s touching himself, too, though—one hand wrapped around his dick and the other grasping at the quilt on top of his bed.

Nick’s breathing speeds up, and he speeds his strokes up to match. In an embarrassingly short time, he’s teetering on the edge.

“This—is gonna—be over—soon,” he manages to say.

“Yeah,” Nick says, and the word is almost lost in the sound of his heavy breathing.

Phil recognizes the staggered moan, the long exhale when Nick comes. He follows him over the edge, and it’s good—so fucking _good_.

They don’t stay on the line for long. There’s still too much unspoken, too much that needs to be said in person. But when he goes to sleep that night, Phil thinks—for the first time in a long time—that everything might be okay.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At long last, here it is. There's probably going to be an epilogue/sequel, but this work is now in itself complete. Enjoy!

Everything goes to hell.

Phil doesn’t want to put it that way—it seems so hopeless—but what else is there to say? 

Ward is Hydra. He should have known. Or should he have known? Should he have trusted Ward less than he did, or more? _If he had treated Ward the way he treated May, would it still have gone down like it did?_

He doesn’t know. Everything is a jumble in his head, and he doesn’t have a clue how to begin sorting through it.

The last time he sat down to write a mission report, he stared at the line for ‘outcome’ for nearly half an hour before he finally wrote ‘FUBAR’ in the blank.

Fucked up beyond all recognition. That sounds about right.

He picks up his SHIELD-issued Stark 5 Tablet and takes a photograph of the report, then realizes there’s no one to send it to. 

Nick is dead.

He has been trying to avoid thinking those three words in that order. They don’t make sense; his brain can’t process them. Now he forces himself, taking a deep breath and screwing his eyes shut.

Nick.

Is.

Dead.

The phone rings. He seizes it, grateful for the interruption. “Coulson.”

“Don’t freak out,” Nick’s voice says.

For a split second that seems to last an eternity, he considers the possibility that he might be dead, as well. Maybe this is what happens when you die. Maybe you just keep on going until another shade reaches out and slaps some sense into you.

But no. He’s not dead. Neither of them is dead.

“I’m going to fucking kill you,” Phil Coulson, who almost never curses, grinds out between his teeth.

Nick laughs, and it’s self-deprecating but also just a little bit happy. Phil hasn’t heard anyone be happy in a long, long time, and the sound eases some small part of the burden resting on his heart.

~

They meet on a park bench atop a bridge in Carson City. Phil wears a suit that, if he’s being honest with himself, might be just a little bit wrinkled. Nick wears a hoodie.

“How’re you doing?” Nick asks, and Phil leans back, trying to figure out how to answer that question. 

“I…I suppose I’m doing well, considering.” 

“I’m sorry.”

“For what? For resurrecting me, or for Hydra, or…?”

“For all of it,” Nick says. “But right now, to be honest, mostly for Hydra.”

“That wasn’t all on you.”

“Don’t even think about telling me it was _your_ fault.”

“Too late.”

Nick lays a hand on Phil’s thigh, just above the knee.

Somehow, this is the gesture that they have been waiting for, ever since Phil was awakened from death so very long ago. It’s a gesture that says _I love you_ and _I’m sorry_ and _come home with me_ all at once, and now it’s up to Phil to accept it or reject it.

He lays his hand over Nick’s, curling their fingers together, and dares a surreptitious glance at Nick’s face.

Nick does not smile, but the lines around his mouth relax.

“Ward wasn’t your fault.”

Phil heaves a sigh. “I think he might have been.”

“Maybe. But if there’s one thing we can take away from all this, it’s that better men than us have been fooled by worse liars than Grant Ward.”

That’s true enough, Phil supposes.

And then Nick says aloud what he said with his outstretched hand a moment earlier. “Come home with me.”

~

Phil’s work in this world is not yet done.

It will not be done for some time, if indeed it ever is.

Sprawled out in bed beside Nick, though, with the morning sun just beginning to seep in through the blinds, it is easy to forget this.

Nick rolls over, still half-asleep, and reaches out blindly to pull Phil closer to him. A hand cups his ass, and he makes a small, soft noise into the pillow.

He is half-asleep, too, or perhaps a little more than that, but his cock is standing at attention. He takes Nick’s hand and moves it over his hip to where he most wants it.

Nick is wearing a pair of boxers, but Phil was naked when he fell asleep last night. It’s easy for Nick to take his cock in hand and stroke up and down the shaft the way only he knows how to do.

Phil draws in a deep breath and whispers the other man’s name on the exhale. “Nick…”

Nick keeps stroking, but he throws his free arm over Phil’s shoulders and draws him still closer. He tilts his head forward so that their foreheads touch. 

Phil draws in breath after breath, each one shakier than the last.

After a moment, Nick’s hand begins to move downwards, tracing the line of his spine. He pauses in the small of his back before continuing on down the cleft of his buttocks, the faintest suggestion of penetration.

Phil comes.

It takes him a long time to recover, and when he does, he’s rather mortified to hear the gasping breaths he’s heaving in.

Nick hasn’t noticed. He’s lying back on the pillows, looking extremely proud of himself, and when he feels Phil’s eyes on him he says, “Well, do I get something in return, or…?”

Phil kisses him.

They do not kiss often; the gesture has always seemed too demonstrative for men who must keep their relationship a secret. But Phil kisses him now, and his hand finds Nick’s cock under the covers. Nick’s breath hitches as his thumb traces the head.

Phil’s strokes are steady and practiced, just as he himself is.

~

_This is why_ , Nick wants to say, as he closes his eyes and anticipates his orgasm. This is why I had to save you. I cannot be myself without you.

He does not say this. He knows Phil understands.

When he comes, it’s all at once, and he doesn’t have time to give Phil the slightest warning. After all these years, though, Phil hardly needs it.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Do come find me on [tumblr](http://blackwellwrites.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/blackwellspeaks) if you wish; I'm very friendly.


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